Middle Men

2009

Action / Comedy / Crime / Drama

Synopsis

Wayne Beering and Buck Dolby are drugged out geniuses with lots of ideas but they can never seem to get their act together. But when they come up with the idea to create a porn site - and charge for it (the first ever site to do so), their idea may be too lucrative for them to handle. Straight-laced business man, Jack Harris, is brought in to team up with them and turn their profitable idea into a legit business. Making money in the pornography industry is pretty easy, but staying true to yourself when surrounded by that much wealth, luxury, sex, crime and temptations, is much harder.

Wayne Beering and Buck Dolby are drugged out geniuses with lots of ideas but they can never seem to get their act together. But when they come up with the idea to create a porn site - and charge for it (the first ever site to do so), their idea may be too lucrative for them to handle. Straight-laced business man, Jack Harris, is brought in to team up with them and turn their profitable idea into a legit business. Making money in the pornography industry is pretty easy, but staying true to yourself when surrounded by that much wealth, luxury, sex, crime and temptations, is much harder.

Tech specs

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Michael Ledo8 / 10

Just like the Social Network

JUST LIKE THE SOCIAL NETWORK except it had more nudity and was far less factual. Okay, maybe it wasn't like Social Network, other than the fact it is more popular, although no one admits to using it. This is "inspired" by a true story which means all the dialogue and most of the characters are fictional. Two genius drug user live together (Giovanni Ribisi plays an excellent paranoid on coke) and can't get any decent porn on the Internet so they decide to create their own web site and invent a program that allows people to pay on line with a credit card. They opt to get new material so they enlist the help of the Russian mafia. Luke Wilson plays a businessman and family man whose narration frequents the movie. He turns their web site into an Internet sensation by allowing access to multiple sites through their billing system.

There is nudity and sex, but nothing that is over the top erotic. Was that Jesse Jane as one of those girls in the background?

The film is front loaded with comedy. The movie starts to drag near the end, in fact whenever James Caan was on the screen, the movie went south. Don't get me wrong, Caan played a good part, it was just boring when he was on screen as compared to the action/comedy/drama going on during the rest of the film.

Reviewed by mekjd8 / 10

Lie Down With Dogs.....

Having heard absolutely nothing about this film or the individual whose life story is portrayed, viewing turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant treat. Sure, it's overstated: the innocent family man falls into the hands of genius drug addicts who deliver him unto the Russian Mob. Along the way he encounters the temptress of all temptresses and nearly rounds aground through the appearance of affiliation with child pornography. Thanks to the federal government and its law enforcement agents, he is duly warned and emerges unscathed. Back to the wife and kids, PHEW!

Somehow Luke Wilson sells it so that it is, for all its far-fetched qualities, believable, just as it is believable that a porn purveyor could blackmail a District Attorney so persuasively portrayed by Kelsey Grammar. That's just one of many delightful scenes in which we learn, time and time again, that crime does pay, really, really well, in fact, until.....let's just say that unwinding the transactions and transgressions turned out to be a good way to go.

Strongly recommended for a good evening's entertainment.

Reviewed by adonis98-743-1865034 / 10

Not that good....

Chronicles Jack Harris, one of the pioneers of internet commerce, as he wrestles with his morals and struggles not to drown in a sea of conmen, mobsters, drug addicts, and pornstars. Luke Wilson gives a nice performance in Middle Men but the overly heavy sex jokes, poor script and laughably bad characters ruin the moment and the whole "Based on True Story" stuff plus not every True Story needs to become a movie just snap out of it Hollywood. The film tries to become like the next Goodfellas or something and the director seems to try to follow the steps of great directors like Martin Scorsese but after a while you will ask yourself if you either watch a porn, comedy or an action movie. (3.9/10)